Hon Deputy Speaker, hon Deputy President and esteemed members of this House, the Freedom Charter says that no government can claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people. The 1994 democratic breakthrough opened the door for the people of South Africa as a whole, both black and white, to elect a government of their choice.
The ANC enriched the democratic culture by making democracy both representative and participatory. The choice of today's theme, Celebrating the legacy of freedom through strengthening links to the public, is most fitting for the unique character of our democratic dispensation, which puts the people first.
Under our Constitution, the government derives its authority and legitimacy to rule from the people. Elections do not give public representatives a five-year licence to do what they like and come back at the end of that period to seek another mandate to do as they please.
The people as a whole, regardless of which party they have voted for, have the right to participate in the legislative and other processes. The structures of Parliament, notably the portfolio committees, party caucuses and constituency offices, are structured in such a way as to involve the masses of the people in the legislative and other processes.
Our Constitution established three spheres of government and enjoins them to work together in terms of the principle of co-operative governance. This principle applies to both the executive and the legislative branch of government.
Hon Deputy Speaker, the ANC believes that the resolve of the hon Speaker to strengthen Parliament's link with the public and facilitate public participation and involvement in legislative and other processes, and its participation in international relations are perfectly in line with the activist character of this Parliament.
We therefore welcome this opportunity to make inputs into your transformation agenda, hon Speaker. Before we do so, we also need to highlight the importance of the image and integrity of this Parliament. As public representatives, we are the custodians of the will of all South Africans, both black and white.
In 2009, we saw ordinary South Africans, old and young, queuing until midnight to vote and give us a mandate to represent their will in this House. But, on more than one occasion this House has failed to pass legislation because of absenteeism without good cause, a betrayal of the people's trust. Hon Speaker, we note your concern about this matter and we will take action. Empty benches, either of backbenchers or members of the executive, of all parties, erode the image and integrity of this institution and betray the trust that the people have placed in us. Hon Speaker and Deputy Speaker, we are hereby giving notice that we shall act in defence of the people and the image and integrity of this House without any further delay. [Applause.]
We welcome your resolve to strengthen the oversight role of this Parliament, but wish to make it abundantly clear that this oversight relates to government departments, and not to the Presidency.
The confusion in this matter was occasioned by a lack of clarity on the status of the Ministry of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, as well as Administration in the Presidency. Minister Collins Chabane has advised us that this department will be autonomous like other departments. Thus, Parliament may establish a portfolio committee or allocate it to another committee, as is the case now with regard to the Appropriations Committee, to oversee the department, but not the Presidency. [Applause.]
We are also of the firm view that the National Planning Commission is not a government department, properly designated as such, which needs oversight by this Parliament. Let us, therefore, once and for all focus on oversight of government departments, and not the Presidency. Besides, we have many portfolio committees which are overstretching our hardworking Members of Parliament and making them ineffective. We shall have to review these committees and rationalise them. The ANC supports the initiative to extend Parliament's buildings. As matters stand now, the environment in this Parliament is not conducive to productivity. Members of Parliament have to walk long distances to attend meetings; there is a shortage of appropriate offices for chairpersons of committees and their staff; and we do not have dedicated offices for big committees. [Applause.] It will be cost-effective to extend the parliamentary buildings to accommodate MPs and their staff. We also welcome your resolve, hon Speaker, to increase research and analytic capacity for our MPs.
With regard to the Whippery, it is the driver of the legislature's programmes in all three spheres of the legislative sector which are interconnected, interdependent and integrated. The Whippery requires a Chief Whips' Forum modelled after the Speakers' Forum, which is similarly resourced to ensure co-ordination and integration of the programmes of the three spheres of the legislative sector.
The multiparty Chief Whips' Forum also needs to be resourced to enable it to interact and work together with the Whippery in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, CPA, and, in particular, to participate in the CPA's Chief Whips' Network.
Our Whippery has already received a delegation from the chief whip of parliament of the Republic of Tanzania, who is also a cabinet minister, who came to exchange views and information with us.
On 28 to 30 June we shall receive a delegation from the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, which will be meeting, with chairpersons of committees, with our Department of International Relations and Co-operation, and also leaders of political parties. We believe that the multiparty Chief Whips' Forum should also be resourced to be able to conduct decent party-to-party relationships.
With regard to public participation and involvement in sectoral parliaments, sectoral parliaments are important mechanisms for public participation. We have had successful women's and youth parliaments. Religious parliaments still leave much to be desired. Some provinces established religious parliaments which they could not sustain because of a lack of clarity on the objectives of these parliaments. Sectoral parliaments within the three spheres of Parliament need to talk to each other and consult on cross-cutting issues. This would assist in policy formulation and legislative interventions where necessary.
To that end, the Parliamentary Interfaith Council, Pic, will be convening the Parliamentary Interfaith Dialogue involving provincial legislatures and the National Interfaith Movement, Nim, composed of the National Religious Leaders Forum, NRLF, and the National Interfaith Leaders Council, Nilc. The two organisations met on 5 January 2011 and agreed to form a single national interfaith organisation. They appointed a steering committee consisting of 14 members. It is hoped that the National Interfaith Movement will also assist faith-based organisations to make policy inputs into legislative and other processes in a co-ordinated way, and to map out their developmental role in partnership with government.
In the January 8 Statement of 2010, President Jacob Zuma said that human development has both a spiritual and material aspect and he undertook to work together with the National Interfaith Leaders Council to create cohesive, caring and sustainable communities. On 17 February 2011 he told this National Assembly:
We welcome the decision of the National Religious (Leaders) Forum and the National Interfaith Leaders Council to form a single National Interfaith Movement. We look forward to working with the movement to mobilize society in promoting job creation, skills development and other national programmes.
We trust that the Parliamentary Interfaith Dialogue in July will come with a programme of action to present to the Presidential Interfaith Summit on 25 August 2011. Such a programme could serve as a basis for partnership between the government and the National Interfaith Movement.
Reaffirming the critical importance of public participation, President Zuma said:
Our government has always derived its strength from the people and from working with various structures of society. We cannot change the lives of our people working alone ... We indeed have to galvanize all our people to work together to release themselves from poverty. We will work with National Interfaith Leaders Council and other formations to ensure that we remain grounded on promoting humanity and Ubuntu.
He went on to reaffirm the activist character of our Parliament in the following terms:
We also said in the State of the Nation Address that the defining feature of this government will be that it knows where our people live, understands what their needs are and will respond faster. We will not allow a distance to arise between government and its people. We do not want to be surprised by anger, nor shall we take our people, especially the poor, for granted. We want to understand issues as they arise and intervene timeously. We will meet with business, labour, youth, religious sector, women and various sectors to ensure that we build this movement for reconstruction and development together. We want to make this a year of action for everyone, not just government.
With regard to international relations, political parties represented in Parliament have a major role to play in the international arena. They are participating in structures such as the Pan-African Parliament, Pap, Inter- Parliamentary Union, IPU, Southern African Development Community, SADC, and the United Nations. Moreover, participation of political parties in these forums and reporting back to Parliament is not the extent of it. The work done in these forums is about the wellbeing of the masses of African people throughout the length and breadth of the continent.
Besides that, agreements reached in international forums and bilateral agreements concluded by the executive have to be ratified by Parliament on behalf of the people. This means that Parliament, through appropriate structures, should report back to and seek the concurrence of the people on international agreements and treaties.
As Parliament, we need to improve the participation of the people in national and international debates. For instance, the upcoming COP 17 Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework convention on climate change in Durban from 28 November to 9 December 2011 should be used as a rallying point to inform and mobilise our communities around issues of the environment. A repeat of the Mapungubwe Rain and Environment Programme of October 2010 could serve as the best community mobilisation for COP 17.
We as political party representatives here welcome the invitation that you received from the IPU to host a parallel event at the conference. You have our full backing for that exercise.
The slave trade, colonialism and apartheid have wounded the African personality and it needs to be reconstructed and developed morally and socially. Our icon, Nelson Mandela, called this the reconstruction and development programme of the soul.
Nelson Mandela told the religious leaders summit in 1997 that religious and political leaders could not achieve their objectives in isolation, because social and economic transformation could not be achieved without spiritual transformation. The international community has also recognised and acknowledged the damage that the slave trade and colonialism did to the African personality, forcibly depriving it of its self-knowledge, self- esteem, self-worth, and culture of self-help and self-reliance, as well as the sense of progress and development. We are confident that the Parliamentary Interfaith Council will contribute to the necessary healing process.
The international community decided to address this situation by declaring 2011 the International Year for People of African Descent and calling on member states to adopt positive measures to this end.
The ANC centenary celebration should reinforce this international initiative. As hon Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Minister of Home Affairs, told this august House, the ANC centenary celebration is not a partisan affair; it is a celebration of all the people of South Africa, Africa, her Diaspora and the world. This was affirmed by the national chairperson of the ANC, former Speaker of this House, Ms Baleka Mbete, who briefed political parties in Parliament today.
Marking the release of our icon, Nelson Mandela, from prison on 11 February 1990, President Jacob Zuma had this to say on the centenary:
During the course of this year, we will mark the centenary of the establishment of the Union of South Africa. This created a unitary state. Significantly, the exclusion of black people from this Union was one of the chief reasons for the formation of the African National Congress ...
While the centenary of the Union of South Africa reminds us of the formalisation of a racially discriminatory constitutional order and the violation of the fundamental rights of black people, the ANC centenary will reflect the struggle for equality, freedom, fraternity and justice for all the people of South Africa, both black and white.
In celebrating the ANC centenary on a nonpartisan basis and as a nation, we shall be recommitting ourselves to reconciliation, national unity, nonracialism and the struggle to build the new South African society that our icon, Nelson Mandela, described in his 1963 treason trial as the African agenda.
Nelson Mandela and other founders of our nation were inspired by the spirit of progressive Pan-Africanism. The President of the Republic, hon Jacob Zuma, supported the call to rekindle this spirit by mobilising all sectors of society locally and in Africa for African renewal, advancement and development.
On 25 May 2011, we celebrated Africa Day around this theme. We thank the Office of the Speaker and, in particular, the Deputy Speaker for leading this process. Going forward, Africa Day should be celebrated through multiparty sectoral programmes designed to raise popular awareness of the African agenda.
As the African Renaissance strives in the modern world to take control of its future and achieve a united continent, South Africans require a full and accurate understanding of their own past and their own place within the greater community of nations. Africa is attempting to revive and reposition herself in the global system.
To address this situation, the presiding officers of Parliament initiated the Parliamentary Interfaith project - now called the Nation-building and Heritage Committee - focusing on perspectives of Africa. We believe that this will assist us, in particular, in addressing challenges and tasks that arise from the New Partnership for Africa's Development, Nepad. Hon Speaker, we are determined to put Nepad programmes high on the agenda of this programme. We have no doubt that, with your very effective and efficient capacity to manage the resources of this Parliament to the point of getting an unqualified report, we will receive the necessary support from your Office.
Hon Speaker, I have the pleasure to say that the ANC supports your transformation agenda and your vision, and we support this Budget Vote wholeheartedly. Thank you very much. [Applause.]